The free software Deletion Extension Monitor for Windows has been designed for that purpose. The program, unfortunately only compatible with 32-bit versions of the operating system, monitors file deletions on the system in realtime. It works similar to programs like Moo0 FileMonitor, Disk Pulse, What Changed or Spy the Spy

The program keeps a log of all files that have been deleted while the program was running. Information displayed for each deletion are the date and time of deletion, the process that deleted the file, the filename that was deleted as well as the size and extension of the file.

You can use the program to find out why, when and by which program a file was deleted on the system.

The program does not monitor all file deletions by default. It only monitors a default set of file extensions, exe, dll or pdf, and provides the means to add additional extensions under monitoring > file extensions.

You can remove, add or edit file extensions to only monitor delete events for file extensions you are interested in. It is not recommended to add file extensions to the list that are deleted quite often, as it would flood the program window with new events. The program does however offer to monitor all files that get deleted. Just check the monitor all file extensions option to do just that.

You can configure Deletion Extension Monitor to ignore files larger than a specified size, and to backup files before they get deleted to recover them when needed. Keep in mind though that you won’t get the disk space back on deletions if the option is enabled.

32-bit Windows users can download the latest version of Deletion Extension Monitor from the developer website. (via Instant Fundas)

Watch 4 Folder is a lightweight software program to monitor folders in Windows. The program can be configured to monitor one main folder for the following six different types of changes:

• file name changes
• directory name changes
• attribute changes
• size changes
• last modification date changes
• security changes

It can furthermore write all changes to a log file and execute a script or program if changes are detected. The computer program uses less than 4 Megabytes of computer memory while running. The developer did not include a list of compatible operating systems. It worked fine in Windows XP SP3 and will probably work as well in older and newer versions of the Windows operating system.

So how does Folder RSS work? A click on folder-rss.exe will explain the command line basics. It basically involves launching the same executable with a series of parameters that define what to watch and how to watch it. The basic command is folder-rss.exe [parameters] [folder to watch] [output file path]. The command folder-rss.exe c:\downloads c:\downloads.xml would create an RSS feed containing the latest changes to the c:\downloads directory. The RSS feed would be accessible by loading downloads.xml (or file://localhost/C:\download.xml)

Folder RSS comes with a set of optional parameters that can be used as filters. It is possible to to configure settings to monitor only files, folders or a specific file extension. It can also be used to change the maximum age of the files, the maximum amount of files that get displayed and to include Read only, Hidden or System files.

The RSS feed is not automatically updating itself. It has to be executed to update it. This can be done with a simple batch script that the user clicks on or that gets added to a task scheduler.